B007TB5SP0 EBOK

by Firbank, Ronald

  ‘You must be very weary.’

  ‘After this I propose to do the I’s … India, Italy, Ireland, Iceland …’

  ‘When you’ve found them you’ll be so bored.’

  Miss Dawkins raised to her lips her flask.

  ‘What ever is in it?’ Miss Collins asked.

  Miss Dawkins fixed her.

  ‘It’s a digestive – cocktail,’ she said at last. ‘Or a Blue Brazilian, as some people prefer to call it … that is so.’

  Mrs Arbanel gave a cry.

  ‘The sea.’

  ‘Have you never seen it?’

  ‘Mabel! …’

  ‘What emerald or sapphire!’ Miss Arne asked. ‘Aren’t you ravished?’

  ‘I mean to bathe,’ Miss Collins announced.

  ‘My dear, how can you?’

  ‘Oh, Gerald, just a dip!’

  Dorinda, Lady Gaiheart, relaxed.

  ‘Colonel Sweetish and Captain Muckmaisie, both old and very dear friends of mine,’ her attitude seemed to say, ‘are somewhere across that light …’

  ‘How many guns are there?’

  ‘Not so many as there seem. Neither Mrs Cowsend nor Lady Dorinda will be shots. They’re only going to pick up the birds.’

  Mrs Cowsend chuckled.

  ‘Like good retrievers,’ she said.

  Mrs Arbanel turned to throw an extra kiss.

  ‘There’s Mrs Erso-Ennis and Mrs Viviott,’ she said.

  ‘Those two!’

  ‘And little Mrs Lawson, who’s really très sport …’

  ‘She says she’s sure she shall shoot someone!’

  ‘Oh, she’s clever, she’s fascinating.’

  Miss Collins scowled.

  ‘I should like her to start trying her tricks on me!’

  ‘And then there’re ourselves.’

  ‘I’ve no gun,’ Miss O’Brookomore said. ‘At most I could throw a book …’

  ‘What have you brought with you?’

  ‘I’ve my Wordsworth.’

  ‘Is he your poet?’

  ‘I’m told I should read Le Charme d’Athènes,’ Mrs Cowsend said. ‘But I always disliked that series.’

  ‘I fancy there’s a new one: Notes on the Tedium of Places – comprising almost everywhere.’

  Miss Collins glanced at her guardian.

  ‘It’s extraordinary Gerald doesn’t go dotty,’ she observed, ‘writing as she does …’

  ‘Does the Life progress?’

  ‘It’s enough to say it assumes proportions.’

  Lady Dorinda spread out her parasol.

  ‘The Kettler cult seems the only shade we have to speak of!’ she said. ‘Since … Eleusis.’

  Mrs Cowsend freckled faintly.

  ‘Were I to have a baby girl here,’ she said at random, ‘O’Brien would insist on calling her Athene; and it would be Olympia. Or Delphine. Or, if on the way there, Helen! …’

  ‘I should have thought Violet, or Violets,’ Mrs Arbanel suggested as the carriage stopped.

  Across a vivid, a perfectly pirate sea, Salamis showed shimmering in the sun.

  Miss Arne held out arms towards it.

  ‘It’s like a happy ending!’ she breathed.

  Boats were in readiness.

  ‘Where’s the wind?’ the Countess sniffed.

  ‘There’s almost an autumnal feel, isn’t there?’

  The wild apple-trees along the shore stood tipped with gold.

  ‘Perhaps we shall see Pan!’

  Mrs Arbanel shouldered her gun.

  ‘To avoid accidents,’ she said, ‘we should drift about in line.’

  ‘My dear, I always fire sideways!’

  Mrs Viviott covered up her ears.

  ‘Don’t!’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I never could bear the crack-of-a-gun business,’ she confessed.

  ‘Then what ever made you come?’ Miss Collins queried.

  ‘Mainly for Mrs Erso-Ennis – to look after her.’

  ‘ “And the sun went down and the stars came out far over the summer sea!” – eh, Gerald?’

  Miss O’Brookomore looked blank.

  ‘I hope you know we’re sweeping straight south-west!’ she murmured presently … ‘I’ve an inkling there’s Megara.’

  ‘It was above Megara the Seymoures—’

  Overhead the sky was purely blue.

  Miss Arne scanned it.

  ‘What is that large bird?’ she inquired.

  ‘Where?’

  Miss Dawkins picked up an imaginary guitar.

  ‘ “That which yonder flies,” ’ [she sang]

  ‘ “Wild goose is it? – Swan is it?

  Wild goose if it be –

  Haréya tōtō,

  Haréya tōtō,

  Wild goose if it be,

  Its name I soon shall say …

  Wild swan if it be – better still!

  Tōtō!” ’

  ‘Enchanting!’

  ‘I learnt it in Japan – that is so.’

  Miss Collins drooped.

  ‘The water’s so clear you can see everything that’s going on.’

  ‘Couldn’t we moor ourselves somewhere and anchor?’

  ‘I could fancy I hear turtle doves,’ Lady Dorinda remarked.

  ‘Oh, they’re city!’

  Miss Arne appeared to pray.

  ‘I love Finsbury Circus for its Doves,’ she said. ‘And I adore the Aspens in Cadogan Square …’

  ‘Does the sea upset you?’

  ‘Oh, Gerald! … She’s certainly going to be queer.’

  ‘I’m fond of that garden too, behind Farm Street, with those bow-windows staring out upon it. I could sit for ever huddled up in a black frock there exciting sympathy … listening to the priests’ voices in the Farm.’

  Miss Collins jumped up.

  ‘Don’t, Mabel! You’ll capsize the boat.’

  Mrs Cowsend shuddered.

  ‘I never could swim,’ she said.

  ‘I trust the gods would drop down strings – a sort of parachute affair – drawing us through the water.’

  Mrs Viviott addressed her friend.

  ‘Were yours to give, Genevieve! …’ she said.

  ‘That’s just you, Iris!’

  Miss O’Brookomore fluttered her eyelids.

  ‘Did you ever see such a rag of a sail?’

  ‘It’s black.’

  ‘O-h, there went a fish with wings!’

  ‘With—’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, my dear—!’

  Mrs Arbanel turned her gun about and – fired.

  XIII

  ‘I shall never forget the hideous moment!’

  ‘They’re driving her round the town.’

  Lady Dorinda slowly wiped an eye.

  ‘To the departed,’ she said, ‘short cuts are disrespectful.’

  ‘I know Athens pretty well,’ Mrs Viviott declared. ‘And they’re going a statesman’s way!’

  Miss Collins threw herself into an easy seat.

  ‘Oh, it’s awful, awful, awful!’ she said. ‘It doesn’t do to think …’

  The Room of the Minerva in the National Museum lay steeped in light.

  ‘It’s as though one held a Memorial service to her somehow,’ Miss O’Brookomore commented, ‘amidst all these busts and urns and friezes …’

  ‘For the Lysistrata that Nymph in the corner was to have inspired her gown. “I shall play her in lavender and helio,” she said to me. And now, poor dear, where is she?’

  ‘Oh, it’s awful, it’s hideous!’ Miss Collins broke out … ‘To-day I feel turned forty! This has made an old woman of me. Oh, good gracious!’

  In her silver hat crowned with black Scotch roses drawn down close across the eyes she might perhaps have been taken for more.

  ‘Mr Arbanel, poor man, seems almost to be broken. Vina’s vulgar violence, he said, disgusts me more than I can ever say – and when her maid went to her door she said, “Go away!
I’m Proserpine.” ’

  ‘Oh … If anyone had told me, Gerald, that I’d become acquainted with a bride-murderess … I should never have believed it.’

  ‘What do they intend to do?’

  ‘Decamp – if they’re wise.’

  ‘When I saw her in her black dress, Gerald!’

  ‘It was a pure accident – naturally, she said, when questioned.’

  ‘One tries to believe it was.’

  ‘She would wave her gun about so. I was in terrors all the time!’

  ‘I suppose there was an inquest?’ Miss Collins said.

  ‘I really couldn’t say …’

  ‘I should like to have been at it.’

  ‘One longs for the country now – to get away.’

  ‘We leave for Delphi directly,’ Miss O’Brookomore said.

  ‘Kettling?’

  ‘Well … more or less … Poor Kitty, she went to Delphi to consult the Oracle and found it had gone. You can imagine her bitterness.’

  ‘I dare say she consoled herself with the fruit … There’s a garden on the way to Itea … You never saw such apples!’

  ‘I dare say that’s gone too.’

  ‘Be careful in Olympia.’

  ‘What does one do in Olympia? Tell me, please!’

  Mrs Viviott fetched a sigh.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘of course one sits, and sits, and sits, and sits, before the Praxiteles … And then, if two people come together there I warn you they’re sure to fall in love …’

  Miss O’Brookomore bowed.

  ‘Here’re more mourners!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it gruesome, Gerald?’

  ‘We turned in here, dear,’ Mrs Cowsend said. ‘I didn’t feel I wanted to go on …’

  ‘That turquoise tinsel thing – violet, I should say – the pall!’

  The Historian seemed to touch it.

  ‘It was her doom, poor dear … On the voyage out I’ve a recollection still of the way she sat on board while the waves burst over her.’

  ‘At any rate she had the sad satisfaction of dying in Greece.’

  ‘My dear, there was no time for reflections!’

  Miss Collins covered her face.

  ‘Was there no post-mortem?’ she inquired.

  Mrs Cowsend showed distress.

  ‘Have you been to look at the coiffures yet?’ she asked. ‘It’s to-day my husband holds his classes, and they’re all in the Vase Room now.’

  ‘There’s a room set aside somewhere for the “Obscene”,’ Miss Collins said. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘My dear, how could one think of such a thing at such a minute!’

  ‘Only to distract us.’

  ‘The Professor’s classes are more likely to do that.’

  ‘In Arcadia,’ Miss O’Brookomore declared, ‘I intend to coil my hair like rams’ horns.’

  Mrs Viviott vibrated.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I never vary. I couldn’t!’

  ‘In Arcadia you’ll find the continual singing of the cicadas require some excluding.’

  Lady Dorinda raised a hand.

  ‘Were I the wife of a gunner,’ she protested, ‘it would make no difference. I should always be high!’

  Miss Collins slipped an arm about her companion’s waist.

  ‘Oh … It’s a Dance of the Hours, Gerald!’

  ‘Dance of the Drumerdairies, my dear.’

  ‘Whose doing was it?’

  Miss O’Brookomore appeared absorbed … For a moment Time hovered, wobbled, swerved. Miss Collins aged for her.

  ‘It’s lovely, Mabel,’ she said, ‘when— Oh, Mabel!’ she said.

  Miss Collins started.

  ‘This caps everything!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Is there anything wrong, dear?’

  ‘Mrs Arbanel’s actually dressing …’

  Mrs Viviott glided forward.

  ‘Geneviève!’ she implored – ‘Geneviève Erso-En-n-is!’

  Miss Collins caught at the Historian.

  ‘Let us go, Gerald,’ she said, ‘before it happens again.’

  XIV

  ‘It’s nice to be in Delphi, Gerald!’

  ‘After Athens,’ Miss O’Brookomore said, ‘it really is delightful.’

  ‘… We never saw the king and queen, dear.’

  ‘No more we did!’

  ‘This morning I followed an empty river bed for miles and miles …’

  ‘To do justice to the walks,’ Miss O’Brookomore observed, ‘one would need to have legs as hard, pink and resisting as a ballerina.’

  ‘Aren’t you going round to look at the Auriga as usual?’

  ‘I hardly know. Possibly I may take a turn presently in the direction of Parnassos …’

  ‘There’s a shrub in the garden, Gerald, all covered in mauve rosettes!’

  ‘It’s perhaps a Delphinium.’

  ‘Oh! I do think it sweet!’

  ‘I wonder who’s here beside ourselves.’

  ‘I noticed the names of Cyril Cloudcap and of Charlie Cumston in the Visitors’ Book …’

  ‘That sounds English.’

  ‘They left yesterday for Olympia, and there was a Mrs Clacton, Gerald.’

  ‘Has she gone too?’

  ‘The Count said we weren’t to be surprised if—’

  ‘My dear, if Pastorelli turns up here we move on.’

  ‘Fussy, fidgety thing!’

  ‘When he makes that sort of clearing noise … No! Really—’

  ‘That’s nothing, Gerald. Why I do it myself.’

  Miss O’Brookomore stared hard at the floor.

  ‘I miss a carpet,’ she said.

  ‘In my bedroom at home, Gerald, the carpet has big blue tulips on a yellow ground.’

  ‘Has the postman been?’

  ‘He’s been.’

  ‘Wasn’t there anything?’

  ‘There was a letter from mum. And another from Daisy.’

  ‘I thought she couldn’t write.’

  ‘She sets her mark.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘It’s only a smear.’

  ‘Is the house disposed of – does your mother say?’

  ‘I conclude it isn’t. She says the greenfly this year has destroyed almost everything. Hardly anybody has been spared. At Patchpole Park the peaches just dried on the walls as though they were dates. And she’s quite in despair about Daisy! She says she gets more hopeless hourly. She’s taking her into York so as to have her ears pierced, poor mite. And papa, he’s at Helstan with Napier – it’s that new seaside—’

  ‘Is the Count aware you’re fidanzata?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him I wasn’t quite free, and I don’t think I will. I must write to Napier, I suppose, and break it off – I feel sorry for him, poor boy.’

  Miss O’Brookomore wandered to the window.

  ‘It’s going to be hot to-day.’

  ‘In the Gulf there’s been rain in two places.’

  ‘Here we’ve the sun.’

  ‘What ever would the vines do, Gerald, without the olives to hold them up?’

  ‘I can’t think.’

  ‘They always say at home nothing can compare with the view from Mockbird Hill. On a clear day you can see to Ditchley.’

  Miss O’Brookomore shaded her eyes.

  ‘There’s an arrival,’ she said.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He’s here!’

  ‘Oh! Mabel!’

  ‘Oh! Gerald!’

  ‘Oh! Mabel!’

  ‘Oh! Gerald!’

  Hand meeting hand, palm meeting palm (the vitality of the one rambling off into the other), they sought to find vent to their emotion.

  XV

  The inn of the Pythian Apollo winked its lights.

  Moving about the bare boards of her room, Miss O’Brookomore made her box. Now bending, now rising, now falling to her knees, it appeared from the road below as though she were imploring fo
r forgiveness.

  ‘For I am the old King’s daughter,

  The youngest, sir, said she!

  The King he is my father,

  And my name is Marjorie …

  Oh, my name is Marjorie, she said,

  My father he is the King,

  I am the youngest child he had,

  And what will to-morrow bring?

  What will to-morrow bring, she said,

  Oh, what will to-morrow bring?

  The King he is my father,

  And what will to-morrow bring?’

  ‘… Gerald, she always sings as she packs! Just making it up as she goes—’

  ‘Why is she in such a hurry to be off?’

  ‘I don’t know. To-day she’s been all veins and moods, whims and foibles.’

  ‘Induce her to remain.’

  ‘If only she would … We haven’t yet been up to the Cave of the Nymphs!’

  ‘Ecco!’

  ‘It’s annoying to have to miss it.’

  ‘One night I sat upon the stairs

  And heard him call my name!

  I crept into the darkness

  And covered my head for shame.

  I covered my head for shame, she said,

  Oh, I covered my head for shame!

  The King he is my father,

  And I covered my head for shame.’

  ‘Sometimes when she starts to sing she’ll keep it up for hours. It depends on what she’s doing!’

  ‘My sister Yoland she is dead,

  And Ygrind is no more …

  They went away to Ireland,

  And nobody knows where they are!

  Nobody knows where they are at all,

  No one seems able to say—’

  ‘Will you come for a little stroll?’

  ‘Where ever to?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  She raised her eyes towards Parnassos, whose cold white heights glimmered amid the stars.

  ‘Oh, it gets grimmish!’

  ‘You shouldn’t be afraid.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘would it be a Pension?’

  ‘A Pension?’

  ‘Those apartments of your mother’s.’

  ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘Oh! … Perhaps I ought to aid poor Gerald!’

  ‘Aiding harms the hands.’

  ‘Mine are spoilt already.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Mum pretends my hands are large because Time hangs heavy upon them.’

  ‘Time in the country, they say, is apt to drag.’

  ‘Not if there’s a farm. Who could be bored by watching the manners of some old surly bull, or a dog on the scent of things, or a dove paying visits?’